Insomnia
by Kaiser Washington
Summary: Rukawa finds himself unable to sleep on the eve of the game against Toyotama. SenRu - for SenRu Day. One-shot.


Standard disclaimers apply.

Summary: Rukawa finds himself unable to sleep on the eve of the game against Toyotama. SenRu - for SenRu Day. One-shot.

A/N: I am not especially in the habit of writing things for SenRu or other days, but since it was around the corner, I figured, Why not? But I warn you: this sucks.

* * *

 **Insomnia**

Rukawa couldn't sleep.

He tossed and turned on his futon till he felt hot from the exertion, but his body was simply not willing to shut down for the night. He tried opening a window, he tried changing his sleeping position, he even counted sheep till he struggled to keep track of what number he was on. All to no avail. For someone who spent the better part of his day sleeping, this was unprecedented. Not to mention the game against Toyotama was tomorrow, and he needed all the sleep he could get.

He sat up.

"Fuck," he said.

"Go to sleep, Rukawa," came Miyagi's sleepy voice from the other side of the room.

I'm trying, thought Rukawa. It's not working.

He decided to go outside and sit under a tree before the rest of his teammates got fed up and sent him out anyway. The cool breeze felt pleasant against his face, which had become flushed with frustration, but sleep still seemed little more than a remote possibility—a concept that poets had dreamt up in one of their less inspired moments.

Why couldn't he sleep?

It couldn't be anxiety about tomorrow's game. Rukawa simply didn't function that way. As a matter of fact, his tendency in the face of daunting challenges was to sleep the more soundly. It was his small way of saying "fuck you" to the laws of nature.

It couldn't be jet lag, because Hiroshima was in the same time zone as Kanagawa. Rukawa fully expected to have trouble sleeping when he went to America someday in the future. That would be natural. This, however, was not natural—it was infernal.

The breeze picked up, and Rukawa's face began feeling slightly numb in the cold.

It couldn't be because he had trouble sleeping in new places, either, because Rukawa had never been one to pay close attention to his surroundings, and everywhere he went was in effect a "new place".

His eyelids drooped now and again, but never enough to reasonably assure him that sleep was in the offing.

He yawned widely several times, but felt none the sleepier.

A white rabbit hopped out of a bush some distance from where Rukawa sat and scampered across the yard. A white butterfly alighted on a white flower. The silver moonlight gave both butterfly and flower an eerily oneiric appearance.

"Am I dreaming?"

Rukawa pinched himself to make sure; but alas, it was a false alarm, and the spot where he had pinched his arm began stinging in the cool night air.

All hope of sleeping deserted Rukawa at this point, and he was seized by a melancholy afflatus.

"Sorry, guys," he addressed himself to his team. He knew he had reached his lowest point that night, because he seldom apologized for anything. "If we lose to Toyotama tomorrow, it will have been because I couldn't sleep tonight.

"Sorry, Akagi-senpai. We got kicked out in the first round of the Nationals, and you never got to conquer the nation.

"Sorry, Mitsui-senpai, Kogure-senpai. I know this was your last chance to play in the Inter Highs.

"Sorry, Miyagi-senpai. Ayako-senpai is probably going to leave the team after this.

"Sorry, Do'ahou. There was nothing I could do about your stupidity.

"Sorry, everyone else.

"Sorry, Sendoh—"

He raised an eyebrow. Sendoh?

He suddenly remembered a dream he had had on the train ride to Hiroshima. He had woken up in a cold sweat, feeling faintly nauseated. Even after he had convinced himself that he was awake, he couldn't shake the feeling that the dream had been real. It had certainly felt more real than any dream he had had in recent memory—in the way some dreams have of feeling more real than reality itself.

In the dream Sendoh had been crying after his loss to Shohoku—after his loss to Rukawa.

"This was my last chance," dream Sendoh had said.

"There's always next year," dream Rukawa had consoled him. Dream Rukawa had sounded an awful lot nicer than Rukawa was in real life. "You will try again next year."

Sendoh had shaken his head. Tears that had welled up in his eyes had begun streaming down his face afresh.

"This was my last chance," he had repeated. "I'm afraid this is it."

Rukawa didn't remember what had happened next, but the terror he had felt waking up should have told him ample. He didn't dwell on the dream any further, since it made him feel sick to remember it, but he couldn't stop thinking about Sendoh. He hoped he was all right.

Dreams have a curious way of making you develop a soft spot for the people that visit you in them—especially an intense dream like the one Rukawa had had. Perhaps you develop a special connection with the people in your dreams after so intimate a meeting—or perhaps the connection was always there, and hence the dream.

Rukawa was no expert on dreams, but what he did know was that he had to hear Sendoh's voice—he had to know for sure that the real Sendoh was not in so piteous a state as dream Sendoh had been.

He shuffled back into the guest house with an air of purpose and punched Sendoh's number from memory into the hallway telephone.

The line rang for what felt like several minutes, when someone picked up the phone at the other end.

"Hello?"

The voice, heavy with sleep, was unmistakably Sendoh's.

"Hey."

"Rukawa?"

Rukawa felt a warm rush at the quick recognition of his voice.

"What's up?" said Sendoh.

"Nothing."

For a long time neither spoke.

"I'm in Hiroshima," said Rukawa at length. He checked himself before he could add, "I wish you were here, too."

"Oh, that's nice," said Sendoh. "Big game, tomorrow, huh? Toyotama, right?"

"H'm." Rukawa tried playing it off as if it were nothing.

"Why are you still awake? It's 3 AM."

"I don't know."

"Stressing out?"

" _No_."

"Okay, then," Sendoh chuckled. The sharpness of Rukawa's response hadn't escaped him. "Was there something you wanted to talk about?"

"I… Nothing." Rukawa had really only wanted to hear Sendoh's voice—that was all. "I should go to bed."

"All right, then," said Sendoh. "Good luck tomorrow. I'm sure you'll win."

"Thanks."

Rukawa hung up. He stood in silence next to the telephone stand for a few more minutes, caught in a whirlwind of emotions, before shuffling back to the common sleeping area. He crept silently to his futon and curled up on the soft mattress, playing the conversation with Sendoh back in his head as he sank into his pillow.

Sendoh hadn't sounded depressed. Rukawa was relieved.

Somehow thinking about Sendoh caused a wave of peace to wash over his body.

It almost felt like the onset of sleep.

In fact, sleep was not far behind.

end.

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A/N: I was originally working on a re-write of a fic I'd posted for Sendoh's birthday in 2009, but I quickly decided that that was unsalvageable. I might combine it with an equally inane, equally unsalvageable draft I have in the works of a humorous SenRu one-shot and post it at some later date, but I honestly don't see that happening. They're both just too horrendous. What you have here now was written sometime after I'd come to the above conclusion, with the appropriate somberness.

This is my third fic so far that prominently features a phone conversation between Sendoh and Rukawa. I seem to have a thing for this particular trope, though it should be noted that this was the first time that Rukawa was the originator of the call.


End file.
